- Home
- About SWG
- Become a Member
- SWG Foundation
- Find Saskatchewan Writers
- Programs & Services
- Events & Workshops
- Retreats
- Resources
Join us to celebrate the launch of Grain's Spring 2026 issue, Volume 53.3, featuring Saskatchewan's New & Emerging Writers! This event will be online via Zoom on June 3, 2026, at 7:00 pm CST.
Hosted by Grain's editors.
Readings by Jeremy Desjarlais, Rahul Edwin, Keegan Grandel, Benjamin Johnson, Robert Judge, Syndel Thomas Kozar, Tyler Lee, Suzanne M. McNabb, Rowan F. Neufeld, Deidre Powell, Paula Jane Remlinger, Mark Romphf, Cynthia R. Wallace, Van Osborne Zimrose, Xauri'El Zwaan.
To register for this online event, please visit: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JI6_VfXlRC6S39hdvNqJBg
Please note that all times listed are Saskatchewan time. Find your time zone here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter
Accessibility Measures in this event:
Print and Digital Copies of Grain can be purchased through the Grain website here: https://grainmagazine.ca/shop-and-support/current-issue
Jeremy Desjarlais is an Assistant Professor of poetry and film at First Nations University of Canada in the Department of Indigenous Literatures in English. His poetry has been published in Vallum and Glyphöria, and his academic work is forthcoming in Chicago Review. He is a registered member of Cowessess First Nation, Treaty 4.
Rahul Edwin is an MFA student in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan. His work has appeared in in medias res, The Fieldstone Review, and River Volta. He is currently working on a 16th-century Indian novel in the mode of what Tzvetan Todorov termed “The Fantastic.” The novel can be crudely described as Robin Hood meets Game of Thrones meets the Arthurian legends.
Keegan Grandel (they/she) is an emerging queer and trans poet from Regina, Saskatchewan, in Treaty 4 Territory. They write about ancestry, grief, queer sexuality, and gender. Their work has been featured in Prompted Mag and Grain. They are a runner-up for the 2026 City of Regina Writing Award for poems to be released in a forthcoming chapbook. More of their poetry can be found online under their name.
Benjamin Johnson (he/him) lives and writes on Treaty 6 Territory in the Canadian prairies, his work focusing on queering space through magic and camp. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has had work published previously by the Ex-Puritan, the /temz/ Review, Hunger Mountain Review, and others.
Robert Judge devises stories in Saskatoon, Treaty Six Territory. He holds a degree in English from the University of British Columbia. His work has appeared in Okanagan Life, Momentum, and Spring. He is fascinated by almost everything, particularly realities that contradict one another. He likes to decollonise words by capitallising on non-hedgemonic pronunciations, lexicons, and spellings, especially the utillisation of doubled connsonants and the glammourisation of overusing the letter “u.” His inspirations include the level of respect modern society confers upon the natural world on which it coincidentally depends and finding ways to rediscover the excitement of travelling prehistoric distances at ancient speeds.
Syndel Thomas Kozar is a Plains Cree/settler storyteller, artist, and community facilitator from Saskatchewan. They are completing a double Honours BA in Indigenous Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, with a minor in English and Certificate in Indigenous Storytelling. A band member of One Arrow First Nation, Syndel’s work explores intergenerational memory, kinship, grief, and survival through Indigenous-centred storytelling. Their creative practice is deeply shaped by being raised by residential school survivors and by a commitment to cultural reclamation, accessibility, and care. When not writing, they facilitate arts-based community programming and advocacy rooted in relationship and resurgence.
Tyler Lee is a writer, poet, and hip-hop artist. His work has been accepted for publication in Radon Journal, Neon & Smoke, and foofaraw. Tyler lives in Saskatoon, where he owns a completely normal amount of sneakers, and definitely isn’t on a first-name basis with the staff of his neighbourhood burrito spot.
Suzanne (Longbottom) McNabb had various works published in the 1990s, including by Grain and Thistledown Press. Before starting a Master’s degree in Psychology, she took a summer job at a power plant and stayed for twenty years. She obtained a First-Class Power Engineering license, working up to the director level. Not bad for a woman in the industry. Now retired, she loves life on her valley ranch where her husband, family, beekeeping, woodworking, and prepper garden compete with her first love: writing. She is currently marketing two manuscripts: cli-fi and romance. She is anxious to write the next story.
Rowan F. Neufeld (he/him) is a queer poet from Saskatoon, Treaty 6 Territory. Rowan’s work has been published in CV2, Silence Zine, and Poetry All Over the Floor: Volume One. He is the Executive Director of JackPine Press and apprenticed with Bruce Rice as part of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild 2025 mentorship program. When not writing, find him bookbinding, messing with film, or distracted by birds. IG: @waxwing.rowan
Deidre S. Powell is a Jamaican-Canadian writer, lawyer, and mediator based in Regina. Her work has appeared in The Jamaica Gleaner and WildSound, and she often attends to the unseen intersections of law, faith, and care. Drawing on her work as a family lawyer and advocate for children, her writing explores justice, tenderness, and intergenerational resilience. She is the author of the children’s book Tell Me a Story, Grandma.
Paula Jane Remlinger writes and edits work for children and adults from her home in Beaver Creek, SK. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia's Optional-Residency MFA program. Her work has appeared in The New Quarterly, CV2, Room, On Spec, Prairie Fire, and in a number of anthologies. She has been shortlisted for The Fiddlehead's Poetry Contest and CV2’s People’s Choice Award for the Two-Day Poem Contest. Her first book, This Hole Called January (Thistledown Press, 2019), won the 2020 Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry. She works as an investigator for the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission in Saskatoon.
Mark Romphf was born and remains in Saskatoon. He graduated from Saskatchewan Polytechnic back when it was called SIAST and has since been working as an over-caffeinated software developer. He is lazy about changing his guitar strings and manages winter with a frivolous collection of patterned sweaters. Online, he sometimes goes by Mike Rome.
Cynthia R. Wallace is the author of the scholarly books Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering (Columbia UP, 2016) and The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil (Columbia UP, 2024). Her creative and scholarly writing has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, the Ploughshares blog, Sojourners, Plough, Commonweal, the University of Toronto Quarterly, Christianity and Literature, the Arizona Quarterly, the Windhover, and elsewhere. She serves as Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan.
Van Osborne Zimrose is an emerging writer from Treaty 1 Territory. They write fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction and are currently working on an MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan. Find more of their work in CV2, on their laptop, and stay tuned for more to come!
Xauri’EL Zwaan is a Lunarpunk Satanist Cyberqueer and a mendicant artist in search of meaning, fame and fortune, or pie (where available). Ze has published short fiction in Transform the World, Saskatchewan Screams, Baffling Magazine, and We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2022. Ze holds a Bachelor of Arts and Science in Environment and Society, minor in Philosophy, from the University of Saskatchewan, and works a day job slinging licensed, regulated, unionized retail cannabis. Ze lives and writes in a little hobbit hole in Saskatoon on Treaty 6 Territory with zir life partner and two very lazy cats.